On-demand: Webinar on smart data use on a pig farm

The webinar was broadcasted live on Friday, October 30, from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 3 expert speakers shared their views on the increasing importance of precision agriculture and how data can improve management.

Click here to get direct access to the webinar  

‘The last meter’ in the pig barn

Introductory speaker Martin Enderink, global sales manager at Nedap, introduced the idea of ‘the last meter’. He said that the entire process of feed management got professionalised over the last decades.

He said, “The farmer nowadays is more like a farm supervisor or a farm manager. He does not see the individual animals on a daily basis. Perfectly designed feed goes into a truck, silo and feeding line, but at the end we just drop it in front of the animals and then… let’s hope that all the individual animals consume the feed. There is a bit of a missing link.”

Enderink introduced Nedap’s ‘sensored solutions’, placing many sensors in a barn to follow individual animals, measuring what they do, what they consume and how much they weigh.

Data collection of the gestating sow

One place where many data can be collected is with gestating sows. This was the topic of the presentation of Hans Hoevink, business development manager Asia at Nedap. Using RFID tags per animal, a lot of the sow behaviour can be monitored. The Electronic Sow Feeding systems are the most well-known example of that.

Hoevink zoomed in on automatic weighing data collection, an application that will run 24/7. He said, “All the sows are identified and will go over the weighing scales. We know exactly which sow has which weight at which date.” He then summed up a range of reasons what benefits there are to know the sows’ body weight.

Providing right rations to lactating sows

Complementary to close monitoring during gestation is keeping a similar kind of oversight during lactation. As these circumstances are different, solutions need to be different too. Jose Simeone, sales and account manager Latin America at Nedap explained about solutions that can be applied in this phase of the cycle.

Simeone said that in modern sow production, sows should be provided rations according to their individual needs and they should be supplied with small amounts, daily and nightly. To that end, he discussed Nedap’s automated feeding solution, which meets those requirements, and is capable of identifying sows with low feed intake.

Click here to get direct access to the webinar